


Axiom

by vargrimar



Series: The Chambers and the Valves [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Canon Compliant, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, Jealousy, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 03, sherlock does what he does best: broods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22822912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vargrimar/pseuds/vargrimar
Summary: And it shouldn’t feel this way. He knows it shouldn’t. It’s illogical. Sentiment is not the heart at all. Sentiment is not the flesh, the muscle; sentiment is not the chambers and the valves. Sentiment is themind.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Chambers and the Valves [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640680
Comments: 1
Kudos: 40





	Axiom

To his credit, Mycroft had tried to warn him.

Meddling bastard.

Sherlock stands in front of 221B’s bathroom mirror, regarding himself with the same sharp scrutiny he inflicts upon clients and various passersby. Although his nose is no longer a frightful mess and the cut on his lip no longer bleeds, he still does look quite the sight. Mycroft’s people have done their best to clean him up post-Serbia—it really is amazing what a trim, a shave, and a proper suit will do for one’s figure—but even London’s best barbers, aestheticians, and tailors can’t conceal the haggard countenance tucked underneath.

He is thinner. It shows in the cheeks and in the jaws and in the pronounced hollow of his throat. Little wonder, really. During periods of intense work, meals had been something of a commodity. His body’s already scant excess fat stores had no choice but to be proved sufficient sustenance. Of course, the nature of The Work had helped him cultivate thicker cords of muscle beneath his skin, which demanded even greater kilocalories to sustain, which in turn further depleted other pockets of body fat.

(Before, John would have told him to eat. John would have bullied him into toast or biscuits or something more substantial like Chinese. John would have coerced him into dinner and coaxed him into taking from his own plate. John would have—)

Slowly, Sherlock begins to undo his shirt. His fingers do not tremble as he unfastens each button. They do not fault or fumble. They merely work down the placket with methodical precision until a long stretch of skin is bared to the mirror. Each cuff follows in short order, and then he turns around.

When he looks over his shoulder, the telltale streaks stare back at him in the exact pattern he expects. They are an off shade of pink, daring to blot darker and redder in some places than in others. It isn’t a worrying colour, but it is a sign he has endured far more than he should have done this evening. Perhaps he should have sent for something other than white. Come laundering time, it will need a good bit of bleach.

With gingerly movements and the occasional wince, Sherlock shrugs out of his shirt. He turns it about to see the blood firsthand, and then folds it into a neat square and sets it atop the toilet lid. Twisting a quarter from the mirror, he casts a brief glance at the lash marks.

They have been appropriately cleaned and, prior to leaving Mycroft’s, appropriately dressed. He knows there will be scarring from the depth and the quantity. The body’s regenerative process is both flawed and gradual; the collagen fibres will knit him back together again, but there will be hatches and grooves and imperfections where the flesh realigns. Things like aloe vera might ease the process and time might help them fade, but neither will erase them completely. They will be his scars to bear. They will be tangible proof of the dangers he’s faced and the deeds he’s done, and he will bear them without complaint.

(Sherlock dares to wonder: Is he a scar to John? Or is he the whip that produced it? Has this woman, this Mary, become his knitted collagen? Might time and the emotional equivalent of aloe vera soften such cross-linked scar tissue?)

After his injuries have been seen to with antiseptic and a damp flannel, Sherlock takes his shirt and enters his bedroom through the frosted en suite door.

To his pleasure, not much has changed since he left. His things are in the same place as they were two years ago, albeit with an additional layer of dust. Not that that’s much of a change, really. Sherlock has never been one for dusting. Aside from Mrs Hudson’s sudden fits of moxie concerning the lino, John is the only one who has— _had_ —kept up on the chore: one designated area once per week on Saturday mornings, and never in Sherlock’s room.

He tightens his fingers into the stained fabric of his shirt. Dusting won’t be necessary.

When he turns his attention to his bed, Sherlock finds the sheets have been changed. He will have to remember to thank Mrs Hudson. Tomorrow, though. His not being dead has given her quite the fright, and she’ll need about twelve hours before she can be considered amenable to his company. After that, he’s sure he’s going to have a difficult time getting rid of her. It’s likely she’ll come round with tea and biscuits or second helpings of supper, fretting over him but not asking the details, and because Sherlock appreciates her (and misses her), he will let himself be fed and fretted over and coddled for a little while.

But only for a little while. There is the matter of that terrorist attack, after all. Mycroft is irritating enough as it is; he doesn’t want the bastard lurking on his doorstep more than he already is.

Sherlock drifts to the chest of drawers and sheds his trousers in favour of navy pyjama bottoms and a soft grey tee-shirt. When he moves to the wardrobe in search of a dressing gown, his divested clothes find a temporary home in the chair against the wall. He opens the wardrobe door to find all of his dressing gowns hanging toward the rightmost corner, just as he’d left them two years ago. They are tucked past his pristinely placed and sorted suit jackets—even the one he’d left discarded upon his bed the morning of his death.

He pauses upon the clothes hanger with a thoughtful frown. Is this Mrs Hudson’s work as well, he wonders, or is it John’s? The silken blue has been nudged in between the other colours, the cord properly threaded through the loops and knotted round the middle. It doesn’t mirror the others and their haphazard _well I suppose I ought to put this away_ appearance. There is purpose in how it was stowed: garment centred, sleeves straight, belt tied, wrinkles smoothed. Mrs Hudson would put the sash back in place, he has no doubt, but this goes beyond her attentive care.

John, then.

He forces a swallow, well aware of the sting on his back and the ache in his throat.

John had come back to Baker Street. Later that day, perhaps. Or had it been the day after? Sherlock doesn’t know. What he does know is that John returned to Baker Street, returned _home_ , and then had at some point—perhaps out of nostalgia or even necessity—braved the shut door and entered Sherlock’s bedroom. There, he’d seen the dressing gown strewn across the duvet. He’d picked it up, and… what then? Put it away with military efficiency? Or had he lingered by the wardrobe, looking, touching, feeling, unwilling to cope with the fact that his flatmate of eighteen months had just jumped off a building before his eyes after a verbal suicide note?

Of course, it hadn’t been fact. Thanks to Molly and Mycroft, Sherlock had left Bart’s that day with little more than a few sore ribs and some scattered bruises. But that hadn’t been for John to know. John had purposefully been kept in the dark because no matter how much Sherlock had trusted (and still trusts) John, no matter how much Sherlock had relied (and still relies) upon him, no matter how much he had cared (and still cares) for him, Sherlock would not (and will not) leave John’s life hanging in the balance of unknown variables.

Because John must be kept alive. That is a non-negotiable term. And as evidenced by the lashes on Sherlock’s back, no price is too steep to ensure it.

The axiom is this: as long as John is alive, so is Sherlock, because Sherlock doesn’t know what he would do if John somehow ceased to exist.

Dismissing the unpleasant thought, Sherlock shuts the wardrobe door and steps past the folded shapes of his trousers and bloodied shirt. He peels back the fresh sheets, sidles in, and cautiously lowers himself onto his side. He won’t sleep here; there’s too much to do, too much that requires his attention, but he needs someplace to think and the sitting room is just—too noisy. Too overwhelming. It has far too many traces of John to be a neutral place of contemplation. Even the thought of taking himself down the corridor and past the kitchen dredges up the shameful need to rock.

Sherlock buries his face into his pillow and broods. He’d had such high hopes for tonight. He’d had a plan, a good and proper one, one he’s certain would have made up for his two year absence, but it had gone all wrong. Sure, Molly had been pleased and Lestrade had caught him in an over-the-top hug and Mrs Hudson had expressed her relief (and anger) after all the screaming, but none of them had been John. His flatmate, his friend—the _one_ person in all this world whose opinion Sherlock actually values—hadn’t been delighted to see him at all.

Surely he’d been glad somewhere underneath? John had been livid, yes. Upset, yes. But there must have been some sort of joy beneath that ridiculous moustache. Sherlock refuses to believe otherwise. He _knows_ John; the good doctor lives for danger and intrigue, and Sherlock coming back from the dead to swoop John off his feet yet again is something he should have positively relished.

Perhaps he’d got it wrong? As loath as he is to admit it, Sherlock does get things wrong on occasion. A rare occurrence, but it has been known to happen. There’s always something, isn’t there? Something he doesn’t quite account for. John moving on is that something, he supposes, but so is John’s girlfriend. Or should he be calling her John’s fiancée? He’d ruined the proposal this evening, that much is certain, so maybe not fiancée just yet.

But she will be in the near future. That is inevitable. John is a stubborn and determined man, forever the soldier; once he has something in mind, he will see it though. This knitted collagen named Mary will cease to be John’s Girlfriend and will become John’s Fiancée, who will then eventually become John’s Wife.

The very notion rankles him deeply and in a way he cannot parse.

Sherlock blots out the image of her soft round face and bleach blond locks and thinks of John. He thinks of John and his desert-sun hair. He thinks of John and his tempest-blue eyes. He thinks of John in his well-tailored suit. He thinks of John and his terrible moustache. He thinks of John and the way he’d looked at him when realisation struck. He thinks of John and his grip on Sherlock’s neck, of John and his knuckles against Sherlock’s lip, of John and the dripping blood he’d drawn by means of an aggressive headbash.

And isn’t it strange, he thinks, that in comparison, all of that hadn’t really hurt?

Gently, Sherlock brings his thumb against the cut on his lower lip. The faint sensation of soreness surfaces as if to protest the pressure. He catalogues it by increasing and decreasing the strength of application in alternating five second intervals. It’s still tender and it hurts the more he presses, but it’s something to busy his fingers. His body desires to move and pace and rock and his hands yearn to entertain things like specimen slides or journal pages or a magnifying glass, but he knows he must stay right here in this singular space as it is the only bastion in Baker Street where John hasn’t touched.

No. No, even that is wrong. John’s touch is already here. The blue silk dressing gown is in the bloody wardrobe.

With a quiet fury, Sherlock thrusts the blankets away and leaps out of bed. The lashes across his back sting from the movement, but he pays them no mind. He stalks over to the wardrobe and wrenches open the doors, and for a long moment, he glares at the offending garment with a rancour he reserves only for objects by which he has been personally wronged. And then, with a haste that definitely does not say _I’m not reluctant_ , _how dare you insinuate such a thing_ , he yanks the dressing gown from its hanger, unknots the sash, and tugs it on.

Hm. No. Still hurts. Why does it hurt?

He shuts the wardrobe door again and pauses to look at the dusty mirror embedded in its front. The man gazing back doesn’t look much different from the one in the loo: same thinner face, same cut lip, same pale eyes, same haggard countenance lurking down beneath. The only difference now is that he is no longer bleeding on his clothes. That, and he happens to be wearing a dressing gown John had touched two years ago, but that’s neither here nor there.

Sherlock watches his reflection as he lifts his right hand and brings it over the space above his heart. Accompanying the pangs across his back and the dulled pain over his lower lip is a deep-seated ache entrenched in the steady beat beneath his lifelines. To his chagrin, the anatomically correct mass of cardiac muscle tissue lodged in his chest cavity feels as if it’s being twisted, punctured, squeezed.

And it shouldn’t feel this way. He knows it shouldn’t. It’s illogical. Sentiment is not the heart at all. Sentiment is not the flesh, the muscle; sentiment is not the chambers and the valves. Sentiment is the _mind_.

His heart, however, doesn’t give a flying toss.


End file.
